Thomas Edison, probably America's best-known and most prominent inventor of all time, and holder of nearly 1,100 patents, is famously quoted as recognizing that technological advances are the result of hard work more than anything else. He said in 1903 that "genius is 1 percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration."

There is now unfolding in a federal court in San Francisco a lawsuit in which several major Hollywood movie studios are suing RealNetworks - a relatively small but successful company that develops and markets Internet communications technology - in an effort to prevent the company from selling a software product that simply enables consumers to copy their DVDs to their personal computers. If the studios are successful in this Goliath-against-David legal action, Edison's lesson in hard work will have been effectively reduced to, "genius is one percent inspiration, 99 percent permission."

The lawsuit, under the supervision of U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel, remains in its early stages, with a hearing set for April, but the studios already have succeeded in securing a restraining order against RealNetworks' effort to market its product, RealDVD. The effort by the studios to hamstring RealNetwork's efforts to bring this latest product to the consumer makes little practical sense, legally or economically, given what the product does (and more importantly, perhaps, what it does not do).

Moreover, considering the difficult financial state of the movie industry generally, and of DVD sales by the major studios in particular, many industry experts are mystified by the studios' expensive and aggressive effort to snuff out a product that many see as actually helping - not hurting - the industry.

While the industry lawsuit relies in part on the "Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998," federal legislation that was designed to thwart the development and sale of products that allow individuals to distribute their own versions of copyrighted material such as movies, the clear fact is that RealDVD software does not circumvent any technology, and does not permit a user to distribute a DVD. The product does nothing more than permit the purchaser to copy a DVD onto his or her own PC or laptop. In other words, the product simply enables the private viewer to watch the DVD they'd already purchased directly from their computer's hard drive rather than rely on the sometimes-cumbersome process of inserting the DVD itself into a player.

With streaming video pirates cutting deeply into movie studio efforts to boost theater and home movie sale profits, an observer could not be fairly criticized for thinking that a product such as RealDVD, with its built-in safeguards against copying and replaying on any computer other than the purchaser of the DVD, would be embraced by the movie industry rather than demonized.

Not so.

The studios, in this latest knee-jerk, anti-technology litigation, appear to be flailing about and striking at any entrepreneurial effort to enhance the ability of consumers to lawfully enjoy the very product the studios offer - movies. In so doing, the studios have not only placed themselves at odds with consumers - who more and more are searching for technological products that offer options and security for their audio and visual needs - but also with entrepreneurs and technology companies who could be among the industry's strongest allies in fighting video piracy.

The movie industry's tin ear in refusing to deal constructively with outside technology (that is, technology the industry did not itself develop and own) is even more difficult to understand, considering the manner in which their colleagues in the music industry have in recent years stopped fighting and decided to embrace technology that has the potential for making more music available to more consumers in more, and more easily accessible, formats. In January, for example, Apple announced it would no longer enforce copyright restrictions, often referred to as DRMs (Digital Rights Management), that prevent purchasers of iTunes songs from shifting such tunes from one device to another. Obviously, the sky has not fallen in the two months since Apple made its announcement.

And the sky would not fall on the movie industry were it to back away from its unfortunate legal action against RealDVD.

Defendant RealNetworks has the law, the facts and common sense on its side. The industry has money and hubris in its corner. Regardless of whether you ever might consider purchasing RealDVD software, this case should concern you; that is, if you wish for fair play and innovation to remain valued commodities in 21st century America. Thomas Edison understood this. Let's hope Judge Patel does, too.